Industrial control systems regulate operation of equipment in an industrial environment, where operation of the equipment includes process(es) typically directed to accomplishment of a complex task or a streamlined, automated task, such as large scale manufacturing. Regulation of operation of the equipment and related process(es) typically exploit and produce substantive amounts of control data, which include configuration data such as controller code, human-machine interface (HMI) data, process recipe(s) and report definitions, or the like. In addition, operation of industrial control systems also produces both real-time and historical data about the status of regulated equipment and related process(es), the data including alarms, process values, and audit/error logs. To operate industrial control systems, various HMIs in the industrial environment render control data (real-time (or last known) and historical data) through operator interfaces which convey process overviews or equipment detail. Multiple operator interfaces are created to provide rich information related to the various control processes implemented in the industrial control system so that the operator can switch between them to monitor various aspects of the equipment and related process(es) under control.
Various factors contribute to the time and human resources necessary to configure operator interface(s) employed to render control data in an industrial environment; such factors include complexity of the equipment and related process(es) that are regulated through one or more controllers, amount of control data collected as part of controlling the equipment and the related process(es), and security protocols and associated data necessary to ensure operational integrity of the equipment. Yet, in conventional industrial control systems, development of an operator interface to consume control data through a dedicated human-machine interface (HMI) is a highly manual process that generally occurs after control design or equipment configuration and contributes significantly to the development cost. Specifically, most traditional HMI systems do not support structured data types, and those that do support structured data, provide only one-way interactions.